Antal Guide and Best Build

Kit Intro

Antal is a 4-star, Electric, Arts Unit Support who specializes in boosting the damage of Heat and Electric operators through a myriad of buffing and debuffing effects. Antal is a universal support for both damage types he supports; he has low SP requirements, Susceptibility, Amp, healing, all types of Arts Infliction and Vulnerability stacking, and outstanding supportive gear and weapon choices.

The core mechanic Antal revolves around is Focus, a debuff he can apply to enemies for an absurd 60 seconds with his Battle Skill. While it’s active, that target suffers Antal’s Susceptibility, and when an ally applies an Infliction or Vulnerability stack to them, Antal can duplicate it and apply another stack with his Combo Skill. Antal’s Ultimate is how he applies Amp; its cost is on the high side, but as long as you time it right and build Ultimate gain, you’ll have it when you need it most. Meanwhile, Antal’s healing is passive and happens automatically during his Ultimate Amp whenever allies use skills to attack.

Overall, Antal has basically everything you could want in an F2P accessible support. The only thing you’ll have an issue with is that there isn’t a Cryo, Nature, or Physical version of him as well!

Battle Skill

Antal’s Battle Skill is the heart of his kit and what the majority of the rest of his abilities and talents revolve around. Using it deals a small amount of Electric damage and applies the Focus debuff to the enemy hit for 60 seconds; only one enemy can be focused at a time. While Focus is active, the target suffers Electric and Heat Susceptibility, increasing the damage they receive. Outside of timing his Ultimate, maintaining Focus is the only other thing to worry about when playing Antal, making him one of the simplest set-and-forget characters in the game to pilot.

Potentials:

• Potential 3: This potential helps address one of Antal’s only weaknesses, needing to reapply Focus after your target dies, consuming more SP than usual in the process. After unlocking refunds 15 SP when an enemy dies with Focus on them. 

• Potential 5: After unlocking, Antal’s P5 boosts his Susceptibility, applied against enemies who have been his Focus for longer than 20 seconds. This boost is a notable improvement to his total buffing capabilities.

Combo

Antal’s Combo Skill is a crucial piece of the puzzle in many teams that rely heavily on Infliction, making it one of the main draw cards of slotting him into your team. To trigger it, the Focused enemy only needs to suffer any Arts Infliction or Physical Status (Lift, Crush, etc.). Using it deals some Electric damage and Stagger but also applies a stack of Arts Infliction or Vulnerable matching the last stack applied to that enemy, so if the most recent Infliction was Heat, he’ll apply Heat. This combo has a slightly longer-than-average cooldown, but using it is simple and incredibly useful in a wide range of teams.

Tip: To make sure you apply the right Infliction, make sure that Antal is ordered in your team order correctly; otherwise, you might end up applying something you don’t want. 

Ultimate

Antal’s Ultimate is as simple as they come; using it requires 100 energy (85 after Potential 4), after which it applies Electric and Heat Amp to the whole team for a modest duration. All you need to know is to time it before your team's major damage windows, and that it’s key to activating his team-based healing found within his talents.

Potentials:

• Potential 1: Increases the Amp effect of Antal’s ultimate by 10% (Unique Multiplier), adding on a few extra percent to an already strong buff.

Talents

Both of Antal’s talents are related to healing, with one being his primary method of sustain and the other acting as a nice bonus. His first and most important talent, Improviser, adds a new effect to his Ultimate Amp, which allows affected allies to heal themselves. When allies affected by Antal’s Amp deal damage with any skill (Battle Skill, Combo, or Ultimate), they now recover their own HP equal to a flat amount plus a percentage of Antal’s Strength stat, but only once every 30s. In order to make the most of Antal’s healing, you’ll need to cycle through at least 1 skill per character every 30 seconds. This, while not hard or something you really need to play around (as most teams' time skills during Antal’s Ultimate anyway), is more restrictive than most other supporters’ heals, which either have easier activation requirements or have no cooldown.

Antal’s other Talent, Subconscious Act, is much less impactful and is a talent dedicated to keeping Antal himself alive with no benefit to the team. Grants him a 30% chance to avoid Physical DMG, reducing it to 0. When this effect occurs, Antal heals himself for a flat amount plus a percentage of his strength. Definitely not a game-changing talent, but a nice bonus which will boost Antal’s own survivability should he get hit, something which shouldn’t be too common as you’ll rarely be using him as the controlled operator anyway.

Gameplay

Playing Antal is laughably simple:

• Keep the tankiest or highest priority enemy Focused with his Battle Skill and refresh it every 60 seconds, unless they’re about to die, in that case, apply it to a higher health target instead.

• Use Antal’s combo to apply Arts Infliction (or Vulnerable). Make sure to swap up the team order as you need to ensure his Combo directly follows other characters’ abilities, which apply the Infliction type you want, to avoid wasting it.

• Deploy Antal’s ultimate before major burst windows to further improve the team's damage if available.

• Aim to cycle through each character on the team’s skills at least once to trigger Antal’s talent healing if survival is an issue.